7.1 Early shift
A light seeps through a gap in Maeven’s bunk curtains and stripes over her eyelids. She opens them squinting.
“Number Fifteen!”
It’s Captain Eyeshot, calling her up hours before the morning leader assembly. Maeven’s eyes snap awake and she launches out of bed. “Yes, Captain Eyeshot,” she answers, scrambling in her uniform. She almost trips. Her blanket falls. She balls it and tosses it in her bunk. Piece of shit.
“Cafeteria. Early shift.”
As she sinches her belt she follows the captain out the door. Gunner grabs her by her pant leg before she can exit. “Hey,” he croaks, stirring in his blanket. “Could you get yelled at a little quieter?”
She removes the grip with a forceful tug.
Outside, the hallway is chilly. She feels the deep and distant cranks of the ship and the silence of the other assignees tucked in their dorms, peacefully asleep. She opens her mouth to yawn. Maeven never used to feel so tired. Her Will would liven her as she needed it. A moment of intent to jolt herself awake, just like a full night’s sleep. But after months of disuse, of Will Block, her power flattened like a neglected piano.
She’s still waiting for that reset. To wake up to a morning that doesn’t feel so miserable.
“What are the five leadership principles of the Reserve?” asks Captain Eyeshot. Maeven forces her brain to wake and recall her leader’s briefings.
“Trust, professionalism, responsibility, knowledge and integrity.” she answers. She watches from the corner of her eyes as Captain Eyeshot pulls something from her holster. No shot. It’s the sniper rifle.
“What is the Reserve’s standard engagement procedure?”
“Plan, reconnaissance, communication, execution and—uh—supervision.”
Maeven watches as the captain loads her magazine. Bullets lined in her hand, she pushes them into the vessel in one fluid motion, then again, with another palm full of .50 calibres. Always prepared, she supposes. She’s never seen someone load a rifle so fast.
No scope. Maeven confirms it with her eyes. No aperture nor bipod.
“How many rounds did I just load?”
“Hm?” Maeven looks up at the captain. “Nine?”
The captain whacks her with the butt of her firearm.
“There is one in the chamber, Fifteen,” she remarks. “You would have noticed that if you were paying attention from the beginning.”
Maeven rubs her cheek.
I guess the only place she falls short on is firearm safety.
“You will do something for me tonight,” says the captain, as she sets the rifle back in its holster by her left leg.
“Am I scrubbing the bathrooms again?”
“There’s an ally ship that is going to pass us tonight. They’re docking north of Mortareste and require a top up,” says Captain Eyeshot. “Scrubbing toilets is tomorrow.”
“Top up…They need fuel? Who are we giving to?”
“The vessel’s name is MS Magician.”
Military Ship, Maeven understands. “So they’re—”
“The real military, yes. You will be present to conduct the fuel transfer. It will occur from midnight, after my signal.”
“…Okay.”
“Do not be scared. This is a one-man job for the Willed.”
Maeven finds that to be an unusually assuring response.
7.2 Replenishment
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Later in the night at 2346, MS Magician, a sparsely lit vessel of clanking metal and swinging wires, sails alongside Peacemaker. The waves are rough, the wind comes in dangerous bursts. These are terrible conditions for a replenishment.
Eyeshot gathers the tension wires on Peacemaker, then lights a signal flare to alert the neighbouring ship, where four soldiers await their diesel.
She hears a hollow thunk—a message capsule shot through the air. She jumps to catch it. Damn aiming, she curses, breaking the capsule and unrolling the paper within.
NEED TO STEER CLOSER. GIVE US A MINUTE, it reads. She crumples it in her hands.
Maeven Riel from Larosa Girls’ Academy of Will.
That day when the girl missed her physical examination, Eyeshot had just been nominated for Secretary of Defense. She remembers waiting in the gym room with her arms crossed, hearing a call come through on her pad. When she was told the news she maintained her composure and kept her responses cordial and short. Her childhood dream—to be a woman of utmost responsibility—now an arm’s reach away.
The first User ever to be nominated as a member of the Cabinet. Headlines. People don’t want to pedestal a person who they believe has the brute force power to destroy the continent.
It is a ridiculous thought process. Governments do that by way of politics all the time. Why would they even think that’s her intention? She’s there to make progress. Cut the bottlenecks. Get from A to B.
She deserves that title. She believes that with all her gut.
Slow, thinks Eyeshot, as she awaits a flare signal on MS Magician. She’s too impatient. She distances herself from the edge of the ship, the span wires looped around her hand, then cloaks her legs with Will and begins to run towards the water. Closer, faster. She steps up to the gunwale and with a burst of Optimisation leaps over the ocean. The the wires in her hand ribbon out, forming a bridge between the ships.
Eyeshot lands with her boots sliding on the floor of MS Magician.
“Captain Eyeshot!” says a marine, spinning on his heels. “H-honour to meet you!”
She greets them with a nod, walking to the fuel receiver with her wires.
I told you we didn’t need to steer closer. Her Will is another level.
Whatever man. Gimme that pen.
You’re not going to get an autograph.
Her name is always a helpful diversion. Not many people know she can enhance her hearing, too.
“Excuse me, Captain?”
Eyeshot shakes her head, and the soldier lowers the pen in his hand. She weaves the span wire at the fuel receiver to secure it in place. “Finished,” she then says. “One of my assignees will proceed with the rest of the transfer.”
A soldier questions, “Just one?”
She doesn’t answer. Her farewell a powerful gust of Will as she leaps back to Peacemaker.
Up in the small yellow windows above, Maeven Riel is laying on her bunk, staring at the ceiling with her fingers laced behind her head. Must be deep in thought, she thinks, as she enhances her vision through the metal walls to signal the assignee.
7.3 Stars
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Is it worth it? Maeven is beginning to question. A week into the Voluntary Reserve and she’s been running around non-stop filling errands.
They other captains don’t yell at her anymore when she’s rushing down the halls without Ocean, they’ve all learnt what’s up. Captain Eyeshot’s little helper. She catches Leichman snickering at her sometimes.
Her Will isn’t getting any better, Gunner is incessantly childish and annoying and nobody knows what they’re taking them across the sea to do. Maybe she should have just stayed home and played Drake Quest VIII. Finished the Beast Compendium. Unlocked the secret ending.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Callum snores so loud.
Her senses burn when she feels a pulse of Captain Eyeshot’s piercing Will Resonance against the back of her head. That must be it. Her signal to start the replenishment mission.
Maeven hurries down the hallways as she recalls the procedure. The fuel is dispensed through a pipe, which is suspended and pulled from Peacemaker to MS Magician, like a moving clothesline, by a series of overhanging pullies and span wires stretched between the two ships. There’ll be marines on the military ship to secure the pipe to their fuel receiver and wait for the tank to fill. Maeven will stay on Peacemaker to turn the pump on, and the marines will use coloured flares to tell her when to shut it back off.
Captain Eyeshot would have already set up the wires, all Maeven has to do is let the machine transport the fuel pump to the other side, manage the lever that dispenses the fuel, then take their equipment back once they’re done. It’s not as brainless as the captain tried to sell it. But asking for help would only be burdensome.
Maeven reaches the deck. She passes Captain Eyeshot.
“I’ve set it up. Don’t do anything stupid,” the captain informs as she rushes by without stopping, silver hair streaming in the breeze. Silently, Maeven promises to herself a perfect execution. This is a test of merit. A chance to prove herself.
She sees the tension wires hanging up and over the side of the ship. Her eyes trace along until she sees MS Magician, sailing on the other end, looking like a shadowed, wiry island in the dark of the night.
The replenishment begins unhindered. She presses a button to carry the fuel nozzle to the ally ship. Once secured, a green flare tells her to start the pump, so she cranks the lever on the wall.
It emits a deep rumble, first scratchy and dry, then it bubbles with the smell of diesel. Thousands of litres swim through the hose rig.
Maeven waits with her arms on the gunwale.
MS Magician is smaller. It’s quite the contrast to the sleek and angular VR ship. It’s got poles and lines, climbing up to a shadowy, t-shaped mast.
Why not the real military? she remembers her brother asking when they were driving to the Rosvale Subloop Station. If she took that question seriously, maybe she’d be on that ship instead. Wearing green instead of blue. They’d be more Users around. Smart ones. Capable ones. She’d get to beat up bad guys with Will-enhanced weaponry.
It’s Captain Eyeshot’s fault.
If the captain never volunteered for The Reserve Maeven wouldn’t be here in the first place. Now that she is, and that all she’s managed is to disappoint the User, Maeven doesn’t even know why she’s here anymore.
The span wires shake when they hit a wave. Maeven watches it for a few seconds before deciding everything is fine. What an unsettling sound. Leichman is extremely skilful to remain a steady course over such turbulent waves. If anything, it’s the receiving ship that’s wobbling the cords.
Minutes go by as she drums her fingers and listens to the constant din of the ocean.
What did I expect, anyway? What did I want?
Her thoughts are disrupted by an awful, emanating tang.
On the opposite vessel, someone yells and a mass drops into the water. The tension lines buckle. MS Magician had tipped so far away that they’ve snapped apart, and they’re whipping back to crash into the ship.
Maeven shrouds her arms and legs with Will. She catches the lines, ripples of metal gliding through her palms as she squeezes against its trajectory. Then she drops it, idle.
She shuts off the fuel pump.
Someone fell into the water. She saw it with her own eyes.
From here, MS Magician is a long way away. She’s not sure she would make it if she jumps, but there’s no time to doubt herself. Maeven steps back a few. Takes two short breaths. As the ship bobs over a wave, she runs to the gunwale and leaps.
She soars high over the ocean, wind blowing. Magician’s metal deck zooms closer. But she can feel the arch of her jump already begin its descent.
She won’t make it. Her eyes shift to the fuel pump, still attached and hanging down into the dark waters. She catches it by the hose with an Optimised grip, and her weight swings her to Magician’s hull. She pulls herself up.
“Man overboard! Connerley, get to the bridge! Why aren’t they sounding an alarm?”
“Don’t bother!” Maeven yells as she’s climbed onboard. The soldiers are Willed, though their Resonance is fairly dull.
“Assignee!” says the soldier. “How the hell did you get here? One of us just got yanked into the water by your support line!”
She glances around to see an orange lifeboat hanging just over the side of the ship, reeled up by chains.
She points at it. “The boat.”
The commanding marine snaps, “Stay out of this assignee!” There’s a subordinate by him, smaller build and recoiling with fear and inaction. She singles him out. “Get that boat down but keep it on the line. You’ll have to pull me up,” she tells him. The man hesitates; though seemingly assured by her calmness, wobbles to the lifeboat.
“Oi! Does she instruct you or do I?” shouts the commander.
With a look of trust, Maeven nods at the subordinate and drops over the edge into the sea.
Commander Howard paces back, then forth. “What are they doing at the control centre? Sleeping?” Meanwhile his teammate Blithe is staring down at the lowered powerboat, clenching his hands over the chain, waiting for their fallen companion.
It’s too dark to see anything below the deck.
“God Blithe, pull the damn thing up we’ll have to turn the ship around,” says Howard.
His teammate is reluctant. “But he’ll drown!”
“Pull it up Blithe!”
Blithe hesitates for a long moment, before finally pressing the button. With the hum of machinery the chains begin reel back, hoisting the boat up and out of the water.
“Alright.” Howard begins to walk off. “I’ll see what’s going on with—”
They’re stopped by the sound of jolting chains.
Howard and Blithe turn around.
The lifeboat!
They run to the contraption, watch as it slowly ascends. Rising from the depths of darkness, they can’t believe their eyes. It’s the bloody Reserve assignee, standing on the boat and patting the back of their sea-spewing crewmate. The crazy lad did it. Swimming against those currents? You’d have to be nuts.
“Richard! You good?” Blithe says. The soaking soldier holds up a shaky okay signal.
“Get Connerly,” says Howard. “I don’t want to have to report this.”
It wasn’t a big deal. All Maeven had to do was swim towards the Resonance until she felt the body. Sure, the current was strong. She’s swam under worse conditions.
After Maeven assists the soldier off the powerboat however, squeezing the ends of her hair to get the water out, the commanding marine stares at her at a loss for words.
Soldier Connerly returns from what was supposed to be a sprint to the bridge, and Blithe takes their wet crewmate to the showers.
“That was impossibly quick, assignee,” says the commander.
“Let’s do the fuel transfer,” she says.
The commander stares at her then laughs.
“You still need fuel. Let’s do the transfer.”
“Line’s broken, assignee. Can’t start the hose without the lines holding it up, the rig’s not strong enough. Let me talk to my guys first, alright? How about you let Eyeshot know what’s happened.”
And get herself near dammed off the ship? No way. “I can hold it,” she says.
“Hold what?”
“The rig might not be strong enough, but I am.”
Ten minutes and a bit of forceful initiative later she’s suspended in the air between the ships, holding one half of broken span wire in her right hand and the other buckled between her feet. Cradled in her left arm is the fuel pipe. She can feel it sloshing, as she’s glows red with veins popping from her skin.
It’s not the pipe that’s heavy, it’s when the ships rock away from each other, and she’s pulled like a slinky, praying that the wires don’t slip from her grasp.
As it turns out, Maeven is barely strong enough.
Be it any normal day and Maeven is sure she wouldn’t pull this off, but impetus adds strength to the Will, and there’s a few salient ideas to keep her together at this moment, that is: the fear of Captain Eyeshot’s vengeful wrath, and the brooding dark bedroom of her parent’s house in Rosvale.
Considering how she’s going so far, she must be scared for her life.
Maniacal laughter echoes out from MS Magician. Maeven’s recklessness is driving that commander mad with entertainment.
Finally, their flares flash green, signalling a complete transfer. Her lungs implode with relief as she exhales and shoots a dose of Resonance at Sketchy to stop the pump.
“Assignee.Fifteen.”
In other words, they actually did it.
Back on MS Magician, the commander flicks a torch to the breast pocket of her uniform, then drops a hand on her shoulder. “That was the most insane thing I have ever seen.”
“Thanks,” she answers numbly.
“Name’s Howard.”
“Maeven.”
“Reckon you’ll do just fine, Maeven.”
She looks at the commander. “With what?”
“With your campaign, of course!” Howard slaps her on the back.
She almost forgot about that whole thing.
“I don’t know anything about the campaign,” she says.
Commander Howard considers this. He leans slightly towards her ear. “Actually it was originally to be assigned to us. Then someone blew up the embassy in Oman and they decided to leave it up to the Reserve.”
Soldier Connerly shoulders her the rest of the span wire.
“I doubt your enemies will be any more skilled than the average VR applicant. The VR has superior artillery. Plenty enough Users. In fact I’d wager on you taking them all yourself!” He slaps her on the back again, laughing. “Oh, come on, I can tell her. She did save us from a report.”
Maeven barely catches Connerly shaking his head at the commander.
Enemies? The nature of the VR’s yearly campaign is really the luck of the draw. It’s known for peaceful school-building, but sometimes, there are wars.
So we really are fighting someone.
“You’re company leader, right? How’s your crew?” asks Howard.
“How did you know?” says Maeven.
“Might have been an assignee too back in the day. The leader thing, every fifth assignee, they do that every year.” He palms her shoulder once again, looking off nostalgically.
Maeven pushes his hand away. “Well it’s a terrible system.”
“You don’t like it?”
“They should pick people who actually want to be leaders.”
“You don’t want to be a leader?”
“No,” she says, squeezing the corner of her VR jacket—it’s still cold and soaking wet. “I want to be alone—I mean. I just want everyone to do their own thing. Why do I have to tell you what to do?”
There’s a knowing look in the commander’s eyes. Kind of like how Sergeant Mayhew looked at her back at the Academy, when she’d opt to stay inside the school gym instead of going back to the boarding house with the other kids. “If we all just ‘did our thing,’ Fifteen, we wouldn’t have things like family and friends. There’d be no military, no VR.”
He pivots her by the shoulder to face the dark waves.
“Fifteen, I owe you some advice. I didn’t think I’d be a leader too, okay? I was always the fuckin’ dumb kid. Five years ago I could barely read a map. But look, here I am,” says Howard, opening his hands. “Beside the technicalities, there isn’t much to it here in the military. You just got to give a damn. That’s all, really. Your lads over there on that ship, they didn’t join the Reserve for nothing. They’re looking for something just like we’re all looking for something. It’s worthwhile trying to help each other find it. And I mean, you could do it all alone, but why? Why when you got people around you going through the same thing?”
Maeven’s eyes rise to the tinctures of light that flicker through the dorms of Peacemaker, like stars. Almost eerily, the rushing wind quietens to a breeze.
“The best companionships happen when you all got nothing better to do. That’s why I love being in the military. Out in the real world, why would anyone talk to anyone? Tomorrow you could swim at the beach, the next day fly to Jamaica. You got no loyalties,” says Howard. “Here, you got four walls and a uniform. You eat breakfast at 0800. Sleep at 2200. You look after your rifles, pay mind at your commanders. It’s absurd, no other place in the world would this make any fuckin’ sense, so you talk about it to your friends in the four walls, the only guys that could ever understand. Give a damn, Maeven. Just try and see what they do with it. While you got nothing better to do with yourself,” he tells her. “That’s the best advice I could ever give you, lad.”